Current and Upcoming Publications

I confess, I take considerable satisfaction in saying that this has been a good year for an old author.

Just under a year ago, OH, OH, Canada: A Voice From the Conservative Resistance (BPS Books) was published, and it continues to chug along steadily.

The Book Absolutes: A Critique of Relativism and a Defence of Universals (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008) was released last October and the hardback edition is close to sold out already! It will be released in a paperback edition this summer. The sales of this book are about 50/50 Canadian and American.

Much to my surprise, when surfing the web a month ago, I saw a mention of the book connected with the name of the highly-regarded American culture critic Roger Kimball (author of Tenured Radicals, and many other very fine books). Roger is presently Publisher and Editor of The New Criterion, an excellent New York-based monthly journal of culture, politics, and the arts, and is also President of Encounter Books – a fine publisher indeed.

So I opened up his journal's website and there was an entire speech that he had given as an Introduction for an international conference in England last October on the theme of “the dictatorship of relativism.” His speech sounded rather familiar, and as I continued I was flattered to realize that he had more or less built his talk around the theme of my Book of Absolutes, and had quoted from it several times. So I called him and made a connection.

The next thing I knew, he sent me a fine blurb for the paperback edition, which I insert here

“A brilliant analysis of the chief intellectual pathology of the modern age ... Writing with wit and erudition, William Gairdner goes to the heart of the defining spiritual malaise of our time, showing (among much else) that relativism and tyranny, far from being opposing forces, actually collude to undermine genuine freedom. The Book of Absolutes is sure to emerge as a modern classic of political and moral maturity.”

~ Roger Kimball, Editor and Publisher, The New Criterion,

and Art Critic for National Review

I confess again, that it was very gratifying to receive such a flattering review of a Canadian book from this prominent and influential American thinker.

Then I got an Email from his Managing Editor at the journal, asking me if I would care to review the well-known leftist – very leftist – American professor Alan Wolfe’s new book, The Future of Liberalism (Knopf, 2009) for the journal’s March issue. Wolfe is a genial and well-schooled Professor of Political Science at Boston College, a contributing editor of The New Republic, and writes for The New York Times, Harper’s The Washington Post, and other such prestigious media. But I knew nothing about him or his work, and the journal wanted the review of this 300 page book in ten days!

So, I figured this was a nice invitation from a super American journal, and said yes. Well, unfortunately, the book, which was to arrive from Knopf in a day or two at most, was still not here on day four. So the right bells were rung, but after a week, I still did not have the book. Finally, 6 days prior to the deadline for the March issue, the book arrived in a damage-bag from Canada Post (with an apology from the latter for its condition). I figured maybe some conservative Canada Post workers had seen it and had had a frolic stomping on it and throwing their coffee dregs on it.

Needless to say, I was under pressure to read, assimilate Wolfe’s message, and write the review. But an hour before the deadline I submitted it as an in-depth review article which, the editor informed me upon reading it, would be used as the cornerstone of the March Issue. Wolfe fancies himself a “modern liberal” and my review basically hangs him with his own words. Here is the response to the article from a Stanford Ph.D. author, and colleague:

“Bill, I just put everything aside and read your assassination of Wolfe. If I were this guy I'd hide under a rock and never come out for the rest of my life!”

The piece is entitle “Wolfe in Sheep’s Clothing,” and visitors can find it at www.newcriterion.com/ in March (perhaps a little prior, not sure). Do visit the journal, and consider subscribing, wbecause this journal has bright, insightful, and nicely written pieces each month on politics, poetry, theatre, books, music, and many other cultural delights. In April, my article will be posted right here, on this site

Finally, I am pleased to mention that another article I wrote will be published in the upcoming issue (not sure exactly what month) of the excellent American journal Humanitas which is a publication of the Maryland-based National Humanities Institute. It is entitled

“Poetry and the Mystique of the Self in J.S. Mill: Sources of Libertarian Socialism.”

The Editor of Humanitas volunteered that my piece “is breaking new ground in Mill scholarship.” (You better believe that was nice to hear!)

This article may be a little on the academic side for some, but I believe it is an important conribution that explains a lot about how the West talked itself into our peculiar combination of maximum personal liberty combined with massive welfare states, and how this direction can be sourced in John Stuart Mill’s sudden youthful passion for Romantic poetry (especially for Wordsworth), and how this deeply influenced his political theories about freedom (especially in his famous book On Liberty) and subsequently, about socialism.

Visitors will eventually be able to see this article at www.nhinet.org/hum.htm and after it has been published there, I will post it here.

So this has been a little summary of my favourite activity during the past year.

Enjoy.